Surely brand isn’t just about customers, but about ALL of your stakeholders?

Just watched the ‘4 Corners’ special report on the power wielded by supermarket giants and the ramifications it can have for suppliers, deliverers, and other businesses in the community. It really made me want to get out there and support small business. But emotions aside, there’s plenty of branding issues…

The supermarket giants, Woolworths and Coles, are definitely here to stay. They have buying power. They have economies of scale. They have the kind of brand equity which makes them very important to everybody they contract with.

But if the report is correct, they’re forming contracts and not relationships. If the Fresh Food People are starting to having negative relations with the Fresher Food People supplying them the Fresh Food in the first place, will it mean we lose out on quality? And how Fresh can the Food be if it’s been trucked across the country and then not unloaded for another day?

Slightly off the topic, I’m surprised that legislation allows profit losses caused by loss-leader pricing strategies to be borne entirely by the suppliers…is that fair? Especially when most of the benefits from extra custom will go to the retailer?

Anyway, the report definitely has some eye-opening points and raises a lot of issues…don’t know if anything will come of it, but at the very least there should be some PR fallout. (No doubt Coles is thinking, “Thank God we just reshuffled and rebranded.”) You can check it out online here.